She did not even know what had befallen the dear being she loved best;
but something dire and tragic had stricken him, and therefore her. The
parson was acutely moved for the anguish he had not probed. Only Dilly
remained cheerful. When they reached her gate, it was she who took the
halter from Elvin's hand, and tied the horse. Then she walked up the
path, and flung open her front door.
"Come right into the settin'-room," she said. "I'll git ye some water
right out o' the well. My throat's all choked up o' dust."
The cheerful clang of the bucket against the stones, the rumble of the
windlass, and then Dilly came in with a brimming bright tin dipper. She
offered it first to the parson, and though she refilled it scrupulously
for each pair of lips, it seemed a holy loving-cup. They sat there in
the darkening room, and Dilly "stepped round" and began to get supper.
Molly nervously joined her, and addressed her, once or twice, in a
whisper. But Dilly spoke out clearly in, answer, as if rebuking her.
"Le's have a real good time," she said, when she had drawn the table
forward and set forth her bread, and apples, and tea. "Passon, draw up!
You drink tea, don't ye? I don't, myself. I never could bear to spile
good water. But I keep it on hand for them that likes it. Elvin, here!
You take this good big apple. It's man's size more 'n woman's, I
guess."
Elvin pushed back his chair.
"I ain't goin' to put a mouthful of victuals to my lips till I make up
my mind whether I can speak or not," he said, loudly.
"All right," answered Dilly, placidly. "Bless ye! the teapot'll be
goin' all night, if ye say so."
Only Dilly and the parson made a meal; and when it was over, Parson
True rose, as if his part of the strange drama must at last begin, and
fell on his knees.
"Let us pray!"
Molly, too, knelt, and Elvin threw his arms upon the table, and laid
his head upon them. But Dilly stood erect. From time to time, she
glanced curiously from the parson to the lovely darkened world outside
her little square of window, and smiled slightly, tenderly, as if out
there she saw the visible God. The parson prayed for "this sick soul,
our brother," over and over, in many phrases, and with true and
passionate desire. And when the prayer was done, he put his hand on the
young man's shoulder, and said, with a yearning persuasiveness,--
"Tell it now, my brother! Jesus is here."
Elvin raised his head, with a sudden fierce gesture toward Dilly.
"She knows," he said. "She can see the past. She'll tell you what I've
done."
"I 'ain't got nothin' to tell, dear," answered Dilly, peacefully.
"Everything you've done's between you an' God A'mighty. I 'ain't got
nothin' to tell!"
Then she went out, and, deftly unharnessing the horse, put him in her
little shed, and gave him a feed of oats. The hens had gone to bed
without their supper.
"No matter, biddies," she said, conversationally, as she passed their
roost. "I'll make it up to you in the mornin'!"
When she entered the house again, Elvin still sat there, staring
stolidly into the dusk. The parson was praying, and Molly, by the
window, was holding the sill tightly clasped by both hands, as if
threatening herself into calm. When the parson rose, he turned to
Elvin, less like the pastor than the familiar friend. One forgot his
gray hairs in the loving simplicity of his tone.
"My son," he said, tenderly, "tell it all! God is merciful."
But again Dilly put in her voice.
"Don't you push him, Passon! Let him speak or not, jest as he's a mind
to. Let God A'mighty do it His way! Don't _you_ do it!"
Darkness settled in the room, and the heavenly hunter's-moon rose and
dispelled it.
"O God! can I?" broke forth the young man. "O God! if I tell, I'll go
through with it. I will, so help me!"
The moving patterns of the vine at the window began to etch themselves
waveringly on the floor. Dilly bent, and traced the outline of a leaf
with her finger.
"I'll tell!" cried Elvin, in a voice exultant over the prospect of
freedom. "I'll tell it all. I wanted money. The girl I meant to have
was goin' with somebody else, an' I'd got to scrape together some
money, quick. I burnt down my house an' barn. I got the insurance
money. I sent some of it out West, to put into that furniture business,
an' Dan Forbes has made way with it. I only kept enough to take Rosa
an' me out there. I'll give up that, an' go to jail; an' if the Lord
spares my life, when I come out I'll pay it back, principal an'
int'rest."
Molly gave one little moan, and buried her face in her hands. The
parson and Dilly rose, by one impulse, and went forward to Elvin, who
sat upright, trembling from excitement past. Dilly reached him first.
She put both her hands on his forehead, and smoothed back his hair.
"Dear heart," she said, in a voice thrilled through by music,--"dear
heart! I was abroad that night, watchin' the stars, an' I see it all. I
see ye do it. You done it real clever, an' I come nigh hollerin' out to
ye, I was so pleased, when I see you was determined to save the
livestock. An' that barn-cat, dear, that old black Tom that's ketched
my chickens so long!--you 'most broke your neck to save him. But I
never should ha' told, dear, never! 'specially sence you got out the
creatur's."
"And 'in Christ shall all be made alive!'" said the parson, wiping his
eyes, and then beginning to pat Elvin's hand with both his own. "Now,
what shall we do? What shall we do? Why not come home with me, and stay
over night? My dear wife will be glad to see you. And the morning will
bring counsel."
Elvin had regained a fine freedom of carriage, and a decision of tone
long lost to him. He was dignified by the exaltation of the moment.
"I've got it all fixed," he said, like a man. "I thought it all out
under that elm-tree, today. You drive me over to Sheriff Holmes's, an'
he'll tell me what's right to do,--whether I'm to go to the insurance
people, or whether I'm to be clapped into jail. He'll know. It's out o'
my hands. I'll go an' harness now."
Parson True drew Molly forward from her corner, and held her hand,
while he took Elvin's, and motioned Dilly to complete the circle.
"Jesus Christ be with us!" he said, solemnly. "God, our Father, help us
to love one another more and more tenderly because of our sins!"
While Elvin was harnessing, a dark figure came swiftly through the
moonlight.
"Elvin," whispered Molly, sharply. "O Elvin, I can't bear it! You take
what money you've got, an' go as fur as you can. Then you work, an'
I'll work, an' we'll pay 'em back. What good will it do, for you to go
to jail? Oh, what good will it do!"
"Poor little Molly!" said he. "You do care about me, don't you? I
sha'n't forget that, wherever I am."
Molly came forward, and threw her arms about him passionately.
"Go! go!" she whispered, fiercely. "Go now! I'll drive you some'er's
an' bring the horse back. Don't wait! I don't want a hat."
Elvin smoothed her hair.
"No," said he, gravely, "you'll see it different, come mornin'. The
things of this world ain't everything. Even freedom ain't everything.
There's somethin' better. Good-by, Molly. I don't know how long a
sentence they give; but when they let me out, I shall come an' tell you
what I think of you for standin' by. Parson True!"
The parson came out, and Dilly followed. When the two men were seated
in the wagon, she bent forward, and laid her hand on Elvin's, as it
held the reins.
"Don't you be afraid," she said, lovingly. "If they shet ye up, you
remember there ain't nothin' to be afraid of but wrong-doin', an'
that's only a kind of a sickness we al'ays git well of. An' God
A'mighty's watchin' over us all the time. An' if you've sp'iled your
chance in this life, don't you mind. There's time enough. Plenty o'
time, you says to yourself, plenty!"
She drew back, and they drove on. Molly, in heart-sick sobbing, threw
herself forward into the little woman's arms, and Dilly held her with
an unwearied cherishing.
"There, there, dear!" she said, tenderly. "Ain't it joyful to think
he's got his soul out o' prison, where he shet it up? He's all free
now. It's jest as if he was born into a new world, to begin all over."
"But, Dilly, I love him so! An' I can't do anything! not a thing! O
Dilly, yes! yes! Oh, it's little enough, but I could! I could save my
shoe-shop money, an' help him pay his debt, when he's out o' jail."
"Yes," said Dilly, joyously. "An' there's more'n that you can do. You
can keep him in your mind, all day long, an' all night long, an' your
sperit'll go right through the stone walls, if they put him there, an'
cheer him up.
"He won't know how, but so it'll be, dear, so it'll be. Folks don't know
why they're uplifted sometimes, when there ain't no cause; but _I_ say
it's other folks's love. Now you come in, dear, an' we'll make the
bed--it's all aired complete--an' then we'll go to sleep, an' see if we
can't dream us a nice, pleasant dream,--all about green gardins, an'
the folks we love walking in the midst of 'em!"
BANKRUPT
Miss Dorcas True stood in her square front entry, saying good-by to
Phoebe Marsh. The entry would have been quite dark from its
time-stained woodwork and green paper, except for the twilight glimmer
swaying and creeping through the door leading into the garden. Out
there were the yellow of coreopsis, and the blue of larkspur, melted
into a dim magnificence of color, suffusing all the air; to one who
knew what common glory was a-blowing and a-growing there without, the
bare seclusion of the house might well seem invaded by it, like a
heavenly flood. Phoebe, too, in her pink calico, appeared to spread
abroad the richness of her youth and bloom, and radiate a certain light
about her where she stood. She was tall, her proportions were ample,
and her waist very trim. She had the shoulders and arms of the women of
an elder time, whom we classify vaguely now as goddesses. The Tiverton
voices argued that she would have been "real handsome if she'd had any
sense about doin' her hair;" which was brought down loosely over her
ears, in the fashion of her Aunt Phoebe's miniature. Miss Dorcas beside
her looked like one of autumn's brown, quiescent stems left standing by
the way. She was firmly built, yet all her lines subdued themselves to
that meagreness which ever dwells afar from beauty. The deep marks of
hard experience had been graven on her forehead, and her dark eyes
burned inwardly; the tense, concentrated spark of pain and the glowing
of happy fervor seemed as foreign to them as she herself to all the
lighter joys and hopes. Her only possibility of beauty lay in an
abundance of soft dark hair; but even that had been restricted and
coiled into a compact, utilitarian compass. She had laid one nervous
hand on Phoebe's arm, and she grasped the arm absently, from time to
time, in talking, with unconscious joy in its rounded warmth. She spoke
cautiously, so that her voice might not be heard within.
"Then you come over to-morrow, after the close of service, if it's
convenient. You can slip right into the kitchen, just as usual. Any
news?"
Phoebe, too, lowered her voice, but the full sweetness of its quality
thrilled out.
"Mary Frances Giles is going to be married next week. I've been down to
see her things. She's real pleased."
"You don't suppose they'll ask father to marry 'em?" Miss Dorcas spoke
quite eagerly.
"Oh, no, they can't! It's a real wedding, you know. It's got to be at
the house."
"Yes, of course it's got to! I knew that myself, but I couldn't help
hoping. Well, goodnight. You come Sunday."
Phoebe lifted her pink skirts about her, and stepped, rustling and
stately, down the garden walk. Miss Dorcas drew one deep breath of the
outer fragrance, and turned back into the house. A thin voice,
enfeebled and husky from old age, rose in the front room, as she
entered:
"Dorcas! Dorcas! you had a caller?"
Her father, old Parson True, lay in the great bed opposite the window.
A thin little twig of a man, he was still animated, at times, by the
power of a strenuous and dauntless spirit. His hair, brushed straight
back from the overtopping forehead, had grown snowy white, and the
eager, delicate face beneath wore a strange pathos from the very
fineness of its nervously netted lines. Not many years after his wife's
death, the parson had shown some wandering of the wits; yet his
disability, like his loss, had been mercifully veiled from him. He took
calmly to his bed, perhaps through sheer lack of interest in life, and
it became his happy invention that he was "not feeling well," from one
day to another, but that, on the next Sunday, he should rise and
preach. He seemed like an unfortunate and uncomplaining child, and the
village folk took pride in him as something all their own; a pride
enhanced by his habit, in this weak estate, of falling back into the
homely ways of speech he had used long ago when he was a boy "on the
farm." In his wife's day, he had stood in the pulpit above them, and
expounded scriptural lore in academic English; now he lapsed into their
own rude phrasing, and seemed to rest content in a tranquil certainty
that nothing could be better than Tiverton ways and Tiverton's homely
speech.
"Dorcas," he repeated, with all a child's delight in his own
cleverness, "you've had somebody here. I heard ye!"
Dorcas folded the sheet back over the quilt, and laid her hand on his
hair, with all the tenderness of the strong when they let themselves
brood over the weak.
"Only Phoebe, on her way home," she answered, gently. "The doctor
visited her school to-day. She thinks he may drop in to see you
to-night. I guess he give her to understand so."
The minister chuckled.
"Ain't he a smart one?" he rejoined. "Smart as a trap! Dorcas, I 'ain't
finished my sermon. I guess I shall have to preach an old one. You lay
me out the one on the salt losin' its savor, an' I'll look it over."
"Yes, father."
The same demand and the same answer, varied but slightly, had been
exchanged between them every Saturday night for years. Dorcas replied
now without thinking. Her mind had spread its wings and flown out into
the sweet stillness of the garden and the world beyond; it even
hastened on into the unknown ways of guesswork, seeking for one who
should be coming. She strained her ears to hear the beating of hoofs
and the rattle of wheels across the little, bridge. The dusk sifted in
about the house, faster and faster; a whippoorwill cried from the
woods. So she sat until the twilight had vanished, and another of the
invisible genii was at hand, saying, "I am Night."
"Dorcas!" called the parson again. He had been asleep, and seemed now
to be holding himself back from a broken dream. "Dorcas, has your
mother come in yet?"
"No, father."
"Well, you wake me up when you see her down the road; and then you go
an' carry her a shawl. I dunno what to make o' that cough!" His voice
trailed sleepily off, and Dorcas rose and tiptoed out of the room. She
felt the blood in her face; her ears thrilled noisily. The doctor's,
wagon, had crossed the bridge; now it was whirling swiftly up the road.
She stationed herself in the entry, to lose no step in his familiar
progress. The horse came lightly along, beating out a pleasant tune of
easy haste. He was drawn up at the gate, and the doctor threw out his
weight, and jumped buoyantly to the ground. There was the brief pause
of reaching for his medicine-case, and then, with that firm step whose
rhythm she knew so well, he was walking up the path. Involuntarily, as
Dorcas awaited him, she put her hand to her heart with one of those
gestures that seem so melodramatic and are so real; she owned to
herself, with a throb of appreciative delight, how the sick must warm
at his coming. This new doctor of Tiverton was no younger than Dorcas
herself, yet with his erect carriage and merry blue eye she seemed to
be not only of another temperament, but another time. It had never
struck him that they were contemporaries. Once he had told Phoebe, in a
burst of affection and pitying praise, that he should have liked Miss
Dorcas for a maiden aunt.
"Good evening," he said, heartily, one foot on the sill. "How's the
patient?"
At actual sight of him, her tremor vanished, and she answered very
quietly,--
"Father's asleep. I thought you wouldn't want he should be disturbed;
so I came out."
The doctor took off his hat, and pushed back his thick, unruly hair.
"Yes, that was right," he said absently, and pinched a spray of
southernwood that grew beside the door. "How has he seemed?"
"About as usual."
"You've kept on with the tonic?"
"Yes."
"That's good! Miss Dorcas, look up there. See that moon! See that wisp
of an old blanket dragging over her face! Do you mind coming out and
walking up and down the road while we talk? I may think of one or two
directions to give about your father."
Dorcas stepped forward with the light obedience given to happy tasking.
She paused as quickly.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "I can't. Father might wake up. I never leave him
alone."
"Never mind, then! let's sit right down here on the steps. After all,
perhaps it's pleasanter. What a garden! It's like my mother's. I could
pick out every leaf in the dark, by the smell. But you're alone, aren't
you? I'm not keeping you from any one?"
"Oh, no! I'm all alone, except father."
"Yes. The fact is, I went into your school to-day, and the teacher said
she was coming here to-night. She offered to bring you a message, but I
said I should come myself. I'm abominably late. I couldn't get here any
earlier."
"Oh, yes! Phoebe! She was here over an hour ago. Phoebe's a real
comfort to me." She was seated on the step above him, and it seemed
very pleasant to her to hear his voice, without encountering also the
challenge of his eyes.
"No, is she though?" The doctor suddenly faced round upon her. "Tell me
about it!"
Then, quite to her surprise, Dorcas found herself talking under the
spell of an interest so eager that it bore her on, entirely without her
own guidance.
"Well, you see there's a good many things I keep from father. He
never's been himself since mother died. She was the mainstay here. But
he thinks the church prospers just the same, and I never've told him
the attendance dropped off when they put up that 'Piscopal building
over to Sudleigh. You 'ain't lived here long enough to hear much about
that, but it's been a real trial to him. The summer boarders built it,
and some rich body keeps it up; and our folks think it's complete to go
over there and worship, and get up and down, and say their prayers out
loud."
The doctor laughed out.
"I've heard about it," said he. "You know what Brad Freeman told Uncle
Eli Pike, when they went in to see how the service was managed?
Somebody found the places in the prayer-book for them, and Brad was
quick-witted, and got on very well; but Eli kept dropping behind. Brad
nudged him. 'Read!' he said out loud. 'Read like the devil!' I've heard
that story on an average of twice a day since I came to Tiverton. I'm
not tired of it yet!"
Miss Dorcas, too, had heard it, and shrunk from its undisguised
profanity. Now she laughed responsively.
"I guess they do have queer ways," she owned. "Well, I never let father
know any of our folks go over there. He'd be terrible tried. And I've
made it my part in our meeting to keep up the young folks' interest as
much as I can. I've been careful never to miss my Sunday-school class.
They're all girls, nice as new pins, every one of 'em! Phoebe was in it
till a little while ago, but now she comes here and sits in the kitchen
while I'm gone. I don't want father to know that, for I hope it
never'll come into his head he's so helpless; but I should be worried
to death to have him left alone. So Phoebe sits there with her book,
ready to spring if she should hear anything out o' the way."
The doctor had lapsed into his absent mood, but now he roused himself,
with sudden interest.
"That's very good of her, isn't it?" he said "You trust her, don't
you?"
"Trust Phoebe! Well, I guess I do! I've known her ever since she went
to Number Five, and now she's keeping the school herself. She's a real
noble girl!"
"Tell me more!" said the doctor, warmly. "I want to hear it all.
You're so new to me here in Tiverton! I want to get acquainted."
Miss Dorcas suddenly felt as if she had been talking a great deal, and
an overwhelming shyness fell upon her.
"There isn't much to tell," she hesitated. "I don't know's anything'd
happened to me for years, till father had his ill-turn in the spring,
and we called you in. He don't seem to realize his sickness was
anything much. I've told the neighbors not to dwell on it when they're
with him. Phoebe won't; she's got some sense."
"Has she?" said the doctor, still eagerly. "I'm glad of that, for your
sake!" He rose to go, but stood a moment near the steps, dallying with
a reaching branch of jessamine; it seemed persuading him to stay. He
had always a cheery manner, but to-night it was brightened by a dash of
something warm and reckless. He had the air of one awaiting good news,
in confidence of its coming. Dorcas was alive to the rapt contagion,
and her own blood thrilled. She felt young.
"Well!" said he, "well, Miss Dorcas!" He took a step, and then turned
back. "Well, Miss Dorcas," he said again, with an embarrassed laugh,
"perhaps you'd like to gather in one more church-goer. If I have time
tomorrow, I'll drop in to your service, and then I'll come round here,
and tell your father I went."
Dorcas rose impulsively. She could have stretched out her hands to him,
in the warmth of her gratitude.
"Oh, if you would! Oh, how pleased he'd be!"
"All right!" Now he turned away with decision. "Thank you, Miss Dorcas,
for staying out. It's a beautiful evening. I never knew such a June.
Good-night!" He strode down the walk, and gave a quick word to his
horse, who responded in whinnying welcome. An instant's delay, another
word, and they were gone.
Dorcas stood listening to the scatter of hoofs down the dusty road and
over the hollow ledge. She sank back on the sill, and, step by step,
tried to retrace the lovely arabesque the hour had made. At last, she
had some groping sense of the full beauty of living, when friendship
says to its mate, "Tell me about yourself!" and the frozen fountain
wells out, every drop cheered and warmed, as it falls, in the sunshine
of sympathy. She saw in him that perfection of life lying in strength,
which he undoubtedly had, and beauty, of which he had little or much
according as one chose to think well of him. To her aching sense, he
was a very perfect creature, gifted with, infinite capacities for help
and comfort.